Evaporation of electrolyte from wet cell batteries can lead to premature damage to the batteries. For various reasons, equipment that uses wet cell batteries are generally poorly maintained, resulting in shorter battery life. The biggest cause of premature battery failure is negligent maintenance, specifically, improperly maintained fluid levels in each battery cell.
A common method for preventing premature battery failure is proactive inspection of the fluid levels in batteries. Since drying or evaporation below the tops of the lead plates can lead to irreversible damage, reactive inspection and maintenance do not improve battery life. Thus, this method has limited effectiveness as the equipment user may not remember to inspect fluid level or know when fluids need to be added.
Another method for preventing premature battery failure involves the automatic electronic monitoring of a single battery cell in a battery pack. Since each battery pack will have a significant number of individual cells, monitoring the water level of a single cell is not indicative of the water level in the other cells.
Other methods exist for measuring specific electrical conditions of the batteries that are based on historical data and specialized algorithms. These methods are generally designed for a very specific battery type and model and can be subject to false readings that are not necessarily related to the battery. A poorly performing battery charger is one such example.